Wicket reaches 6.0, learns some new tricks

Another week, another Apache foundation project getting an upgrade. This time its the turn of Java-based web framework Wicket.

Another
week, another Apache foundation project getting an upgrade. This
time it’s the turn of Java-based web framework Wicket, which has
reached version 6.0.

Yes, you read that correctly: Wicket has seen its numbering system
recently redefined, jumping straight to 6.0, Despite the absence of
a Wicket 3, 4 or 5, due to this version’s requirement of Java
6.

Wicket 6.0 includes a rewrite of the custom AJAX library to jQuery,
making it easier to integrate jQuery plugins — and allowing the
framework to be swapped for another if you have a preference.

More experimental modules provide real-time server push
functionality, both with integration of Atmosphere (which has also
just shipped
a new release) and native Websockets, though the latter only
supports Jetty 7+ and Tomcat 7+ for now. Another experimental
module allows integration of Twitter’s open-source Bootstrap
frontend.

Other changes Wicket 6.0 brings to the table includes the replacing
of inline events with JavaScript event registration, allowing
multiple event listeners to be added and (obviously cleaning up and
reducing the size of the markup); ${label} replacing ${input} in
feedback messages for clarity; and the replacing of the deprecated
Tree component with AbstractTree, and specialised forms NestedTree
and TableTree.

Meanwhile, a change to the IDataProvider<T> interface from
‘int’ to ‘long’ to match the Java Persistence API, allowing use of
larger data sets — or, to use the current buzzword, ‘big
data’.

Two features missing the boat are component queueing and Contexts
and Dependency injection (CDI) integration, the former postponed
due to “various technical problems” and the latter not yet ready to
merge to Apache Wicket.

Overall it’s a pretty solid update to the framework, with the
experimental real-time modules providing some indication of the
direction Wicket is heading in. At the time of writing, the
download
page has yet to be updated, though
press releases assure us it is “now available”.